Sips from the Fountain
Learning to drink from Jesus, the Fountain of Living Water, isn’t as hard as I thought, especially when you just start with sips, and those will change everything.
Sips from the Fountain
When the Dream of Motherhood Shatters: Life Wasn't Supposed to Be Like This
What happens when life takes a drastically different path than you ever imagined? Renee Stains' powerful testimony reveals the raw, unfiltered journey of raising a medically complex child for 25 years while fighting to maintain her faith through seemingly endless suffering.
When an ultrasound during pregnancy revealed that one of Renee's twins had a large tumor on his face, she had no idea the medical odyssey that awaited her family. Daniel was born with a tumor as large as his head, requiring a tracheostomy at just six weeks old and beginning a lifetime of surgeries, hospitalizations, and constant medical interventions. Never able to eat by mouth, almost completely deaf, non-verbal, and developmentally delayed, Daniel's care consumed every aspect of family life for decades.
With remarkable transparency, Renee shares the toll that constant caregiving took on her marriage, her faith, and her mental health. Living in perpetual "fight or flight" mode while coordinating complex medical care would have broken many people. She recounts moments of anger toward God, questioning His goodness, and wishing for some kind of escape from the suffering. Her husband turned to alcohol to numb the pain, creating additional challenges in their already strained lives.
Yet what makes this story extraordinary isn't just the suffering but the transformation that occurred through it. Renee describes a pivotal moment when, crying on her bedroom floor, she made the conscious choice to trust God even when she couldn't see His goodness. This decision began a journey toward supernatural peace that culminated years later when she clearly heard God tell her He would be "taking Daniel to heaven." Though the timing proved different than expected, Daniel did indeed pass away shortly afterward, finally free from suffering.
The spiritual insights Renee gained through this crucible of suffering offer profound hope for anyone facing seemingly insurmountable challenges. Perhaps most powerfully, she reflects on Job's words: "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you," suggesting that sometimes the deepest, most authentic relationship with God comes precisely through our most painful experiences.
Have you wondered if God has abandoned you in your suffering? Listen to Renee's extraordinary testimony and discover how even our darkest moments can become sacred ground where we encounter God in ways we never thought possible.
Do you ever feel like life can get too complicated and maybe even overwhelming? Yeah, me too. And it's okay. My name's Martha Gannot, and in this podcast we're going to talk about life, love, faith, family, relationships, all kinds of things, and we're going to drink from what God wants to pour into us, one small sip at a time, because when it's the fountain of living water, small sips make all the difference. Sometimes it'll be just you and me, sometimes we'll have a friend join us. If we could have lunch together today, this is what I'd want to talk about. Okay, hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm super excited for who we're going to be having on the podcast today. This is Renee Staines, and Renee and I were college roommates and we're actually talking in this series. Life wasn't supposed to turn out like this. So we're going to be talking about what rolled out in Renee's life after we graduated from college.
Speaker 1:But before that, renee, I just I told you I was going to tell the story, but you know you started dating Frank while we were roommates in college and Frank worked for UPS and those are brutal hours for a college kid and Renee's job was to call him at three o'clock in the morning and make sure that he was up to go to his shift. He would not wake up, sister. He would not wake up. And there were mornings that ended up with both of us sitting yelling into the phone hoping he would throw wake up. And there were mornings that ended up with both of us sitting yelling into the phone hoping he would throw it across the room. So we were yelling into the phone, trying to get him to wake up so he would keep his job in college yeah, oh my goodness, and you were a good roommate to deal with that.
Speaker 1:We go back a long yeah and you do, we do and we do. And, renee, you know I started watching your story before social media. You would send out Christmas letters and you started telling us the story of Daniel that you're going to share today. And so it started with. Once a year you would update us about what was happening, and I've told you already that one of the things that so impacted me about your story was how you navigated an incredibly difficult life situation and maintained your relationship with God.
Speaker 1:I want to hear about that, but also that you were transparent about what the journey was like and that it was difficult. You never tried to pretend that it wasn't what it was, and your transparency is such a blessing that it wasn't what it was, and your transparency is such a blessing. I know we all live with really difficult situations at different points in our lives and our hope, with what we're going to talk about today, is that you'll hear from Renee's story that God can meet you, no matter how hard, how dark and how difficult, and I'm just excited to hear you share. So what if you just start off with your story Like met Frank, got my whole thing? Let's hear it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, well, hi everyone. So yes, as Martha said, I met my college sweetheart, who she met as well and helped me wake up. But fast forward a few years and we dated all through college and I married him the summer before my senior year. Actually, we were married about five years and decided to start a family. So this is kind of where my story begins. So I got pregnant pretty quickly and within a few weeks I was already having some complications. So I had an early ultrasound which revealed that we were having twins, which freaked me out, because I was not even sure I was ready to be a mom, much less to twins. So that was kind of scary. But within a few more weeks things turned even more scary and the Lord was giving us something that we had no idea we could do. And we found out that that next um ultrasound, that we were having boys and that one of the boys had a large tumor off the side of his face and neck that was as large as his head and that was super scary. Um, and at that point in my life I was pretty strong in the Lord. I had been a Christian since I was five years old and had a pretty close walk with him throughout mostly high school and college, and so I really was relying on him. It was just second nature to just trust him with it, and so during that time I would say that I was pretty strong, pretty just relying on him, day by day as we were getting news.
Speaker 2:The pregnancy itself was a difficult pregnancy. I kept going into preterm labor and they ended up putting me on bed rest. Um, I ended up moving in with my mom, because Frank was actually starting a new job in the financial world with my dad. My dad was mentoring him and so they would go to work and mom would watch me and help me out and, um, take me to appointments and things like that. Um, during that bed rest, and then I ended up going into pre-term labor and ending up in the hospital for several weeks. That was time that the Lord just continued to grow my faith. I was spending lots of time by myself, so I was in the word, reading the Bible and praying and just asking the Lord to be with me and to help me through all of this, and I just felt him tangibly very close during that time. So then, um, I went into labor again and they weren't able to stop it. So at 23 weeks um, no, I'm sorry, 32 weeks, um I gave birth so it was two months. Yeah, well, I w I said 23 weeks cause that was the first time I went into labor and thankfully they were able to hold it off that long. So they were too much premature.
Speaker 2:They both weighed three pounds each and Daniel's tumor was as large as his head. It had been misdiagnosed in utero so we were dealing with a completely different type of tumor that is called a cystic hygroma or a lymphangioma and it grows really rapidly in the infancy and toddler years, and so right away he was going to need surgery. His windpipe was not staying open. They both were on ventilators at first and Andrew, besides being premature, he was pretty typical, so after he got off the ventilator he just needed to grow. But Daniel, the tumor was kind of crushing his airway. So he needed surgery at six weeks old and they removed the bulk of the tumor and gave him a tracheostomy, which was a huge fear for me. I was praying that he would not have to have a trach. We were told it would be only in a few weeks, but it ended up being the rest of his life with that. He also got a feeding tube six weeks later in another surgery and was never able to eat by mouth.
Speaker 2:These are all things that were obviously quite scary, but we were literally just, I think, hanging on by a thread like every day, just taking in news and walking another step forward. And I have another child who's at home, like Dan or Andrew, was eventually able to go home the day after Daniel's first surgery. So I was back and forth to the hospital, which was an hour away from our house, so daily taking um Andrew back and forth. And, yeah, thankfully I had a wonderful church family that really helped a lot, and my mom and dad. So we were in the thick of it for those months and months turned into years of constant surgeries and within the first three years of Daniel's life he had about 15 surgeries. He coded several times. I did CPR on him twice and it was just a lot of scary things.
Speaker 2:We were living in Wisconsin at the time but a lot of his surgeons ended up being in Minnesota after a little while. We had to come over here, so I was living out of the Ronald McDonald house. A lot with Andrew Frank was going back and forth and it was just surgery after surgery after surgery, as you saw in those updates. During that time I would say still I was doing okay. But as you watch your child in so much pain and you continue to pray for miracles which I had faith God could do I knew he could speak a word and heal my child. And I think that's where you get to a point of where are you, god? I have been following you, I've been trusting you, and yet you continue to let things spiral and watch him hurt. So much was just.
Speaker 2:It was excruciating as a mom and Frank was doing all right, but again just like trying to work in a new job, go back and forth every week, and I think his faith was faltering more than I even knew. We just couldn't even have time to connect during that time, and so he started to drink alcohol a lot, which ended up being quite a bit of a problem, and so we were just not, at this point I would say, not doing great. We ended up having to move to Minnesota to get the care that he needed and finally, at the age of three, daniel came home to our new home. We had to have in-home nursing care. He needed 24-hour care in the beginning and then it turned to like 16 hours of care. But he never could be left with just anyone because he had the trach and all the medical care that went along with him. So he had to have.
Speaker 1:Just to clarify you said at three years old is when you were finally able to bring him home to live in your home with you. So for three years you have another baby going back and forth and then you eventually have and then having surgeries in a different city and then, oh my word, renee is just coming back to me as you're talking about it and I just was like how I, you know, makes me wonder. Like when you're in so much survival, do you even have down moments where you're able to process and ask God the hard questions Were they coming at that point?
Speaker 2:In the beginning, yeah, and those beginning year I should say just beginning, because he lived quite a while after that. But during that time it was just day by day, like I said, just clinging to God, trying to get through it, maybe having some anger here and there and praying, but not really processing it. I wouldn't say until after we were kind of settled and we call it our new normal, and we were finally a family at home, daniel stabilized. We were finally a family at home, daniel stabilized. And you know he would. We would go for times where he was doing well and he was such a happy child. It's just such grace that God gave him to be going through so much all the time and he was just happy. He'd go in for a surgery and maybe just wince a little bit afterwards and then just be happy, happy Like it was. It was incredible.
Speaker 1:And so during those times, he's like smiling, laughing, but he was smiling. He was never verbal right.
Speaker 2:He was never verbal. During um, one of those early surgeries, his vocal, one of his vocal cords got cut Um, and he just was never able to because of the tumor and the way it grew. The tumor kept growing. That's what a lot of these surgeries were just continuing to remove the tumor. It grew down through his throat and into his chest and so they had to do surgeries in his chest to open it up and get it out. Then he would end up with scar tissue and the scar tissue was keeping air from getting up past the other vocal cord to make sounds. So he was always nonverbal vocal cord to make sounds, so he was always nonverbal.
Speaker 2:Once we got him kind of through some of these major surgeries, we were trying to do what would be considered not surgeries that absolutely had to happen, but we were trying to get his life a little bit more. We were hoping one day that he would talk, that he would eat by mouth all these prayers that we were hoping for. So his surgeon continued to do surgeries to try to open up the vocal cords and so I mean the airway to get to the vocal cords, and there were times where he was having surgery every. I think it was every two weeks for two years he was going in to stretch and open things up, try to get through that scar tissue, and there were times when we would pray for one thing and we would get the absolute opposite. There was a time that I was praying for like a miracle that afterwards I get to say God did this, I was praying and this is what happened, and he coded on the table that day. This is what happened. And he coded on the table that day and I just couldn't wrap my head around why. We had another family that was very similar to ours was walking a path and they were just getting miracle after miracle. And I just thought God, why? What are we doing wrong? And these were some of the questions were common to your mind and it's just Satan messing with your head. But wondering, what am I doing wrong? Oh, if it was only if you know, I could get this right in my life. Or if Frank would stop drinking, or if you know, and I would just start saying, if we would just do X, y and Z, god will come through for us. Or tell me the prayer, tell me the right way to pray. Am I not praying the right way. I mean all these kinds of things.
Speaker 2:And there was a time where Daniel had a excruciating surgery where they had to break his jaw and it ended up going completely wrong. I mean, he lived through it. So I have to look for the. I'd always try to look for where God did come through. But he ended up having a huge bone infection after that in his jaw. They had to take bone from his hip and put it into his jaw to fix it and he had to wear this hardware on the outside of his mouth for the longest time and I just that was one of my lowest points with the Lord I was so angry. We also found out he had the immune system of someone living with AIDS. He didn't have AIDS, but then his immune system was super compromised and I just thought, lord, I don't understand, why does my child have to suffer so much? And I would just cry out to him.
Speaker 2:And I had a night where I remember I call it kind of my wrestling with God, like was it Jacob that did it with the angel and you know, and it just I remember just being on my floor in my bedroom on the floor, just cry like the guttural kind of crying and just being so angry with him and Dean to the point like I don't even know if I can believe you're good. How could this be good? And it was in my spirit. I just felt like, okay, are you going to walk away from me or are you going to trust me? And I thought, okay, let's weigh this.
Speaker 2:I actually thought about it and I'm like okay, if I walk away from you, what would that look like? And it was like this sinking, disgusting feeling just came over me, like I can't imagine not having hope, I can't imagine not walking through life with you. So I have to trust you. I have to trust you. I have to just get beyond this. Even though I don't see goodness, even though I see nothing good in this, I have to completely trust you. And so I was still mad at him. But I got up off the floor and I said, okay, let's do this. And I just kept going, and so I wasn't going to say all that.
Speaker 1:But, anyway.
Speaker 2:So we went forward. Like I said, over the years, it was um dealing with having nurses in our home all the time, which are a blessing and a curse, um, I mean it can be really helpful, but we had a lot of horrible experience with nurses we had and with the nursing shortage, the? Um we had tons of shifts open that when we would have to do extra shifts, night shifts, where I wasn't getting sleep. Um, we would have to um learn all the new cares for him. We'd have occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy. Um, he went into the public school system when he turned five and thankfully was able to do public school all through high school. Um, but it was, you know, dealing with IEPs and you know learning how to um go through the whole special education process.
Speaker 2:He was diagnosed then with he had he was on the autism spectrum, he had he was almost completely deaf. He had a seizure disorder, he was developmentally delayed, like I had mentioned earlier, he was nonverbal and he never did learn any kind of communication. We worked on sign language, we worked on communication devices and he just didn't understand it. We don't really know exactly where he was in his mind because he couldn't tell us but based on how he acted in the tests they can do, he was probably like a toddler most of his life. There were some things he could do beyond that, but most of it was pretty young and he was, like I said, during the beginning pretty happy. But then when he hit around puberty which happens a lot with special needs, because something kind of changes and he just got less and less happy.
Speaker 2:It got to the point when he got older where I mean in all this time, all these years that are passing, there wasn't one year he didn't have surgery. There was not one year he wasn't hospitalized for something. And I mean at one point he had kidney stones. It wasn't just like the things he was born with, that, it was like other things. He started getting vascular malformations that are very painful, and so it was. It was continued nonstop living in fight or flight and where you're just your adrenaline's constantly going, you're not sleeping well, you're constantly praying and begging God for healing. And and so it was. It was just years, years. So I kind of on a fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just remember it seeming like you constantly a detective, because he was nonverbal, he couldn't tell you, I mean the pain of kidney stones, the pain of the, all the pain he was going through, he couldn't communicate, or when something was wrong. So things would pop up and it was like you were trying to take the symptoms and put them all together. I remember times, renee, that you figured it out first and told the doctors what was going on. That's how constant, full-time, all in fight or flight, trying to figure it out and avoid the next crisis or deal with the current one, just wow.
Speaker 2:Cause, like, even when we had downtime you know downtime if he was at school with a nurse or something like that it was like that. It was constantly research. I was in like medical research all the time, all the time. And you know, doctors don't have time to do all that research. And so you come in with a nonverbal child and you're saying he's, I think he's having pain, it seems to be located here. He can't tell us. And you had to beg them to do an ultrasound or a CT scanner, an MRI.
Speaker 2:And it was thankfully in the beginning years we had some really great doctors that had him for years and years and years and they knew me and they listened to me. But as he got older and we had to transition into adult care, it just completely flipped. They didn't know him. They didn't, I mean they didn't know us. I mean there were times where we felt like we were being accused of like doing things to him. There was just there was a lot of. You had to be very careful on how you worded things. You couldn't get too angry or upset, and it was just like always pushing down, like when people were not listening. And yeah, it was a lot of stress, I wasn't going to talk about all that either, but anyway so. So during this time, like when Daniel was getting older and older, um, we started first of all. We didn't realize he was going to live that long. And so you start going what are we going to do when he gets older?
Speaker 2:Like, or what happens if we he would full size guy, yeah, yeah, and thankfully he wasn't as big as our other son, andrew, who is like six foot. Daniel never got, I think he was about five three Um, but he was, you know, getting older and stronger and as he got into his adult years he was getting very angry and violent when he'd get mad, and so he, you know, and I think a lot of it was pain that we could not figure out and a lot of it was that nonverbal piece where he's stuck inside this body. He's almost completely deaf, so there's no way to tell him things, there's no way for him to understand what's going to tell him things, there's no way for him to understand what's going on, and then there's no way for him to communicate what he's feeling or thinking. And, yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:It was so painful for all of us to walk through that um, and, like I said, the nursing shortage was like a huge piece too that we were just like we were constantly exhausted and and we weren't doing doing well at this point, and I just remember, you know, just Frank was drinking more and more, which ended up, um, I was at a breaking point of just like I can't do this anymore. Um, I'm dealing with, and at the time too, I was also working with kids with emotional behavior problems too, and so there was just stress everywhere and I just remember begging God to come through, like I cannot do this one more minute In all honesty and transparency. I was thinking of just wanting to be dead. I was never going to, never, ever did I think of suicide, but the thought of just being in heaven just was so like I just want us all to be there. So if you could take us all in a car accident, that would be awesome.
Speaker 1:I love your transparency, because I think that to say that this is not a this is not a deal breaker. If you have these thoughts, this is not, you're not going to do anything, it's not going to end anything. This is a natural result of living under this much pressure and stress, and so, if you do have these thoughts, you're actually not alone, because Renee just told you she had those thoughts, so thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's like it's living at like a pressure cooker, Like if the top is about to blow all the time. And I just remember like being in normal settings where you're maybe with family at a, at a you know a gathering, and you get a little testy about something and everyone just looks at you like what's wrong with you? Or you get, you know, get talked to later about something that you said or did, and it's just like do you have any idea what kind of pain I'm in? And I just don't think people don't often want to enter into that deep place of pain and thankfully I had a good friend that walked through a lot of it with me. But, um, you know, a lot of people just don't understand or they can't comprehend.
Speaker 2:I don't think that kind of stress because it's, it's not even just what I've mentioned, it's everything like that goes along with medical care, like all the appointments, and just think of one time where you had to be on hold for 15 minutes or to get through to a live person.
Speaker 2:I mean that was all the time.
Speaker 2:I mean I mean that was all the time, I mean cause he had, he had a doctor for every organ of his body practically, Um, it was constantly making appointments, it was insurance companies, it's just that constant, constant research on top of it and all the things, but anyway.
Speaker 2:So we were at this point where I was just begging God to to come through, and especially with Frank and the drinking. And you know, he was a Christian and he did trust in the Lord in his own way, but he also his faith, I think was a lot more rocked than mine and he was pretty mad at God and, and so that was the way he was kind of numbing the pain and also because it was just so hard to sleep with the noise that was going on in the house all the time. So when we did have a nurse, it was like banging and breaking things and you felt like you had to go down and help and and so he was trying to just sleep through the night, and so, at any rate, the Lord answered my prayer by giving my husband pancreatitis, which sounds crazy.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure if you say that to him or not, or how he takes that, but oh, frank knew what he had done to himself and so we walked through that, which was another very difficult time. He was in the hospital a month and he almost died himself, and another month of surgeries with him after that. But during that time when he was in the hospital I don't even know how it was the strength of the Lord got me through because I was having no sleep. I barely had any nursing care at that time. I barely could even go to the hospital to see Frank and I ended up having to transfer him from one hospital to another because they were not doing the care that they needed and he was dying. And so all of this, I should have been completely losing my mind. And this is where I was back to, not mad at God, I was trusting God. I absolutely knew that the pancreatitis I shouldn't say he gave it to me, he allowed it, but that he was answering my prayer because I knew he wouldn't quit drinking without something huge happening. And when that happened and Frank knew it, like he knew when, when he was first diagnosed he was like I did this to myself and I said, yeah, and I prayed you there. So you know, god did, god did use it and and so during that time I should have, like I said, been falling apart, but I dug deep and I was just in prayer all the time. I was in the word, I was in devotionals, I was listening to podcasts, I was just doing anything I could to just immerse myself with everything that God could give yes, life giving. And during that time, um, yeah, god just strengthened me and I had such a peace. I knew that he was going to be okay. And during that time, yeah, god just strengthened me and I had such a peace. I knew that he was going to be okay. I knew that he was going to come out of it okay and never drink again, which is exactly what happened, which is just God's miracle in his life, and he's much stronger for it.
Speaker 2:And so, anyway, I'm kind of back to Daniel's story. So, during this time when Frank's just you know having his surgeries and getting out of the hospital, daniel was getting worse. So you would think here I am all strong and relying on the Lord and that God would flip the story and everything would be rosy, but instead it got worse for over the next three years, they were probably the worst years of life with Daniel and we still don't know exactly what was going on with him. I mean, you get at that point. The doctor sends you to psychiatrists. We had to put him on psychiatric medication which I don't even know that he needed, but that seemed to make things worse and it was just all. I can't even go into all the stories, because podcasts would go on forever.
Speaker 2:But during that time we were seeking the Lord, we were praying about what to do and at this point we just knew we were probably going to have to find a group home for him, because we just weren't getting the care we needed and I couldn't survive on no sleep. I mean, it was literally getting probably three to five hours of sleep a night for years and my body was shutting down. I was exhausted night for years and my body was shutting down. I was just, I was exhausted. And so we started to look for a group home. During this time we were seeking, we had no idea where to even look and we had already had put them on a waiting list years before, and so we checked in with them and they did not have an opening and we never, we never in our wildest dreams, thought we would put them in a group home. That was our biggest fear. Yet God seemed to be leading us this way, so we just kept trusting. So, finally we we did find a group home that would take him and, um, we were real upfront with them about all that was going on. Um, daniel had been.
Speaker 2:When we did get him into the group home he had had a few months of really decent behavior. So they took him in and it was just a relief to get him in someplace and, again, totally fearful that he wouldn't understand what was going on. In the very beginning he seemed really happy and then it kind of turned and it kind of what expected to happen that he just got. He didn't know what was going on. I'm sure why we weren't with him all the time anymore. We did visit him all the time. We had to help there. That ended up being another huge stressful situation because they weren't prepared, they didn't know how to care for him. They were in over their heads.
Speaker 2:And so during the first few months or a few yeah, a couple of months when he was there, we went into doing some home repair, trying to like fix all the holes that he had made and, you know, a kitchen revamp and we were doing all these things and in the middle of that, my parents decided to move out of their home of 56 years. So we were going back and forth trying to help them with the move and during this time frame, they called me to let me know that he's going to have to be moved out of the group home because it's not working, because there's other clients there and they were worried about their safety. And so I just I threw up my hands once again and it was just like God, I have no idea. We we worked for years to find this one group home that would take him. How are we going to find another group home for him? And so, again, just fell to my knees, just prayed constantly.
Speaker 2:That was during COVID, during 2020, that this was happening. So I'm like, how are we going to find a group home that will take him in the middle of COVID? And so, again, just seeking the Lord, just praying and asking, and, lo and behold, the Lord came through once again and there was a nurse that was working at our current group home that had a friend who was opening up another group home, and she said group home that had a friend who was opening up another group home and she said she's willing to take him. And I said, does she know all that she's going to take on? And she said, yes, and that was a miracle because we did look with, we had other people looking with us social workers and other people and we literally had 17 denials before this group home. And it's because he had the medical, the very, you know, intense medical care that required RN and LPN care as well as having behaviors, and it's just kind of unheard of that. There's those types of group homes. So we had to be a have him moved out by September 30. And this was after, sorry, we had to do an appeal process to get him more time in the first group home and thankfully we had to do an appeal process to get him more time in the first group home and thankfully that was a whole other thing with lawyers and et cetera, and we won the appeal. We were able to get another 60 days I believe. So in that timeframe is when we finally found the second group home and, like I said, that was probably the timeframe that God developed the biggest change in my life in trusting him. This brought us into like the summer of 2021.
Speaker 2:And I was just on my knees every day on my deck praying, and anytime I had time to myself, I was just learning more about Him. I was reading my Bible, I was praying. Like I said, it was kind of just constant podcast, but what the Lord kept showing me in everything I was looking at whether I was listening to a podcast, whether I was reading a devotional or my Bible he kept taking me to the story of the Israelites and how they were in the desert, and that's how I felt for years. It's like we were in a desert. I used to kind of joke to the Lord. It's like, okay, am I going to be here for 40 years? So it felt like it. At this point, daniel was 25 years old, so it had been 25 years of this, and I just kept getting this theme that he was going to take us to the promised land soon. I just I kept having this feeling something good was going to.
Speaker 2:We were on a process of a change or something, and one of the things, too, that I started doing regularly I always loved to sing and I just would be on my deck and started to sing praise songs to him, even when I couldn't see what was going on, because this was in the midst of how are you going to come through with another group home? They're kicking him out in 30 days. We still don't have a home for him. And it was just like the God of the Bible just showed up and he was so tangible and the songs that were popular then that still are. But like Waymaker and I would just sing Waymaker, miracle, worker, promise, keeper, light in the Darkness. My God, that is who you are and I'm sorry I'm getting choked up, but I would proclaim it before I knew what was coming. I just I knew that the God of the Bible, if he would show up, then he's going to show up now. He doesn't change. He's the same yesterday, today and forever. And I knew he was going to do something big. I just had no idea what it would be. And all those years when he didn't feel like a good God, the song the goodness of God was out and I would just pray that back to him too. Like you are a good father, you are my good father and you're going to take care of my son because you love him more than I do. And so I just had this crazy faith that I knew was from the Lord. I knew that he was giving me the peace that passes understanding and I just clung to him. So he showed up in a really, really tangible way. And I just have to tell the story, because today is July 10th and today is the third year anniversary to God telling me.
Speaker 2:I was out of my depth praying. I came inside and I was just about to get something out of the refrigerator and in my head I heard I'm taking Daniel to heaven on Friday. And I just sat there like what I thought, I didn't think that thought and I knew it was God and I just said back to him in my head to heaven. And he said yes, and I just I fell to the floor in my kitchen and I just wept and it felt like hollow ground. It felt like the Lord was just. I was at his feet and I just cried and I thanked him.
Speaker 2:And it sounds insane because for years we prayed for Daniel's life. We prayed, we begged God to not take him. We begged him. And here I was, out of my debt, begging the Lord to take him home. I remember praying Lord, if you're not going to find him another group home. Please just take him home to heaven. I just want him out of this pain and I know I'll see him again. I know I have the hope of heaven. So he was answering. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2:So I just again went out and praised him and that's kind of how I just continued for the next days because we thought Friday was coming and just for lack of time I don't know how to even tell this quickly but he didn't take him that Friday and so then I started wondering well, maybe it's just any Friday, because he didn't say this Friday. And so I lived in this wonderful holy anticipation that and Susie Larson is a speaker here in the Twin Cities, she's national, but she talks about having like a holy expectancy for what the Lord was going to, is going to do in our lives and it could be for anything. But I started living in that holy expectancy and it became like almost an anticipation, like Lord, when are you going to do this? And it was exciting.
Speaker 1:It was so weird because it sounds crazy, it's like after with him living in so much torment and so much distress. I mean it was so difficult for the people who were taking care of him. You knew as his mom he had to be just terrorized on the inside and tormented and locked in to so much confusion and constant pain. So wow yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so, yeah, it became this wonderful, like I'm going to take care of him, he's going to be with me soon, and even though each Friday that passed, it was kind of, it almost became funny. Like we were just like, well, we can't make plans on Friday because he might take him this Friday, but we just kept. We were excited for it because we knew God was working, and so what was crazy, though, is that this woman came through with this second group home out of the blue, and so we were like okay, well, I thought you were going to take him, lord, but maybe he's going to move into a new group home, and that's what happened. So, september 30th of 21, he moved from the one group home into another. So, september 30th of 21, he moved from the one group home into another, and again he was kind of happy in the beginning, but then it became difficult again. He broke a window there. He was just not happy, and again it was just like okay, lord, any day now you can take him home, because he's just not happy and he's not doing well, and thankfully, he was only there a few weeks before he started to get sick, and that, again, sounds crazy. It's a thankful attitude I have.
Speaker 2:But he was not doing well and they ended up taking him to the hospital and found out he had COVID as well as pneumonia, and we all ended up with COVID at the same time. Then we're not sure who gave it to who, but anyway he over the next two days kind of declined and so I thought, okay, friday's coming, this is probably it. I had COVID, so they wouldn't let me go visit him, and that was the first hospitalization in his life where I wasn't with him in the hospital. Thankfully Frank was over his COVID, so they allowed him to be with him and so he would kind of go back and forth. But so the next days he started to swing and turn better and they and again it was so weird, friday came and went Saturday, sunday, and we're like, okay, maybe he's going to make it through once again.
Speaker 2:But on Monday things changed and that evening we got a phone call that he was not doing well and we were on the phone with him when he had a grand mal seizure and he went home to be with Jesus. And it was so unexpected that day because it wasn't Friday and I couldn't understand it, but I was also just I think I was in shock that he was really actually gone. But immediately I was just like Frank he is with Jesus, he isn't a new body. He's out of the pain and suffering. And God came through. God spoke and, even though it doesn't make sense to me, he came on a Monday.
Speaker 2:And you know it's funny because my good friend who walked through this with me, that we went to college with, she did a deep dive on the word Friday and in the Bible Friday was a day of preparation for the Sabbath, and so the word Friday actually means prepare or preparation. And she said how do we know that God wasn't just preparing you to lose him? And it was his graciousness that he had us even have him in group homes, because he wasn't in our home when he passed away. We were used to kind of him not living here for the last 11 months, so it was his goodness that he took him to a group home first and then he took him to his heavenly home after.
Speaker 2:So during that time and I think I just want to end with just some of the things that God taught me was that God loves us so much that when we don't see, when the darkness is so dark. These are the things that I think that God has taught me, because I know another time will come. Daniel might be in heaven, but there'll be another thing I walk through and I don't want to forget. I don't want to forget ever that God loves me, even when he doesn't seem to be loving me and with whatever's going on, that he promises to bless us and not harm us. If we see harm coming our way, if things are happening, that's Satan. We don't need to get angry with God. God is working it out for our good and that's the other. You know the Romans 8, 28, that people often quote. But God is working things out for our good. Even when we don't see, even when things look horrible and it doesn't seem to be any goodness happening, he is a good God and that he's with us. He promises that we will suffer, but he will be with us in it. He will not leave us or forsake us.
Speaker 2:Other thing that I kept getting was that, like I said, the Israelites like that. He goes before us like the pillar of the cloud by day and the fire by night. He goes before us. He's already fought the battle. He's already won the battle. The battle is the Lord's. We don't have to fight it, we just need to rest and be still and trust him.
Speaker 2:And I think that's what's the hardest for us to do is to just not do, not kind of just like, be like a hamster on a wheel. We want to just constantly be doing and God saying just be still, I've got this, just trust me. And when we can do that that summer that I was just trusting, those months leading up to Daniel going home, it's the piece that passes, understanding that you can't even explain to someone. I mean for me to be that joyful, my husband would look at me and Frank would just be like how are you not freaking out? We don't have a group home, we don't even have a place for him. How are you not making phone calls? Still? And I was just like God's got it, it's already done, he's got it worked out.
Speaker 2:And the praise that I gave him too, I think is also key that I learned to thank and praise him even when I didn't see yet. And it says in the Bible that God inhabits our praise and you just feel him closer. I felt I've never felt him more close. He's trustworthy, we can trust him. And when we, when we honestly trust him and thank him and praise him when things are bad, the peace that comes with it is is otherworldly, it is, it's just, it's supernatural.
Speaker 2:And I, I really relate to the end of Job too, um, where Job's gone through everything. He's been suffering for years, or you know, this time of losing, not years, but in a day, lost his, his whole family and all that he had, um, and then his health. And in the very end, in Job 41, 5, it says my ears had heard, had heard of you, but now I see you and I feel like that's how it was, like I, I was walking all those years with the Lord, since I was five years old, and I had heard of him and I thought I knew him. But I think, in the suffering that we, that I, went through and what he brought me to, um, that I, finally I see him and I think that that's what we, that's what we need when we, when we suffer, we need to just trust and he will show up.
Speaker 1:And you know what, Renee, I think I might even go a step further and say the place, the deep place that you've gone, the deep relationship you have with God and the communion with him, I don't know that there's another path to that except for suffering. It's like the verse in Job that you just quoted, and I think that, especially in modern America, we've made a God of this American dream and it's 2.5 kids, the white picket fence, the great house, two cars, you know, two weeks of family vacation, great IRA. And what we don't realize is that is not the path to what our destiny and purpose was. Our personal happiness is not the path to it. And when that suffering comes if we can take that perspective of wow, I'm about to really know who you are, because if you don't show up, I've got nothing- Exactly.
Speaker 1:And then he shows up and we know him at a level we couldn't have ever known if we hadn't needed him, right yeah. So if you're someone who is in the midst of suffering, if you're not, like Renee said, it's going to come at some point.
Speaker 2:It's coming.
Speaker 1:It's a part of being on this planet. I just pray that every person who's heard this testimony Renee will take into their hearts that they don't have to be afraid of suffering, that it actually can be a way to go to deep places with God, that he can take all of that suffering, turn it on its head for our good and for its glory, that it does not have to work the purposes of Satan in our lives. Because the truth is, renee Robichaux Staines, you could have ended up angry and bitter and raging for the rest of your life, and I think we all know, people, that that's where the hard things in life take them and they get stuck in it and they never get out. But you chose to like. You chose to give him a gift that cost you. When you sang on your back deck, when you prayed and told him, you trusted him, no matter what it cost you to do that, and that, I think, just like any wonderful dad, when their kids are willing to chase relationship with them, even when they don't understand, it, draws his heart to us like nothing else, and that's where we get scooped up into his embrace, even as we are weeping in pain. So I just honor you. You didn't just choose that once. You chose it.
Speaker 1:For 25 plus years I watched you choose it, which is why I reached out to you and asked you if you'd be willing to share your story of walking through this and coming out on the other side deeper and stronger and just like those Israelites in that wilderness, what happened there prepared them for what was going to be in the promised land. Just like Joseph had to walk through the torment and the prison and the pain to build the character that he would need to steward the favor and the blessing that was coming Like, I see that coming with you. We may have to do another episode where you share what God's been doing with you in the promised land. I know you said you've had to share your story and you hate public speaking, so who knows what's going to happen with this?
Speaker 1:Maybe he'll make you love public speaking too because, your stories were sharing and we appreciate that you shared it with us today. So thank you so much. You're welcome. We appreciate it. All right, you guys. Thanks for joining us again. We hope this blessed and encouraged you and we will see you next time. Hey you guys, thanks for hanging out with us today. I hope you got some refreshment from this sip from the fountain. If you're curious to hear more, or if you like what you've heard, you can go ahead and subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to yours or follow our Instagram account, Sips from the Fountain, or our Facebook page by the same name. Special thanks for Cover Art Photography to the Sarah D Harper, and I can't wait to hang out with you guys next time. Thanks so much. Love y'all, Thank you.